


Isle

by yarnwithpictures



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Animal Death, F/F, Gen, Guns, Mystery, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Supernatural Elements, Thriller
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-23
Updated: 2019-02-23
Packaged: 2019-11-04 05:20:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17892257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yarnwithpictures/pseuds/yarnwithpictures
Summary: A quiet and run-down Pearl is done living in a crowded apartment building. She can hear through the walls, and what she hears doesn't help with her nightmares. Deciding to move to an island by herself is the most extreme thing she's done in years, but it won't be the last. Strange things are happening at night- and the isolation is becoming more of a burden than a blessing.“Some general advice… don’t cut down the trees, don’t kill the goats…” she scratched her head, thinking of another piece of advice, “Oh, and the dog’s name is Stewart.”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Olivia(joytaylor) was craving pearlmethyst, and in hindsight this whole fic is just a big tease cause it's mostly Pearl, but I hope this is enough to set off some daydreams at least. (https://oliviajoytaylor.tumblr.com/post/182992784797/i-have-an-old-pearlmethyst-fic-seeped-in-lore-or)  
> So yeah. This was written a long time ago in response to something my girlfriend made for me. Thank you Olivia for giving me a reason to post it.

Pearl felt decidedly fuzzy on the way to the island. She was still a little surprised at herself for doing this, for uprooting everything to go somewhere profoundly unfamiliar in search of peace and quiet. The decision was strong in her head before, but now that she was in the little boat she felt like the water underneath the wood beneath her feet; just gliding along, pushed by the motor of previous certainty. She didn't want to turn around and go in the other direction, but what was ahead was so foggy that she felt like leaning away. It was hard to feel anything but stupid looking at a flat, blue horizon, reflecting wispy white clouds, until land turned over the Earth and into view. 

The island was small, with five small red structures sticking up out of the ground like Legos. One was a barn, and the other a house that could probably hold a few people. As they approached, Pearl recognized the lumpy shapes of goats plodding around, munching on the healthy green grass and occasionally galloping away from a mottled collie. 

There were trees guarding the inside of the island from the shore, as green as the rest of it. They passed the entrance to a large pond that broke a small part of the island to let water in. Each side of the break was guarded by a tree. Pearl noticed three boats sitting in a row upside down next to a dock further along as they slowed to a stop next to it. The dock extended into the water like a bent arm a short way from a shed squatting underneath a shady tree. 

Pearl got up as soon as the engine was idling and the rocking wasn’t as bad, carrying her bag with her. The rest of her stuff had been brought here beforehand by someone else; the old woman steering the boat had mentioned getting a relative or someone to do it a few days ago. She had a voice as insubstantial as the clouds hanging above them, and it cracked occasionally. 

“I’ve already given you the number you need to call if you want supplies delivered instead of coming back in one of those,” she gestured vaguely to the line of boats, “I’d just use those for emergencies, actually.” 

Pearl nodded. 

“Instructions for power and everything are in the house. Ah…”

The woman stood in the boat. Pearl had forgotten her name. 

“Some general advice… don’t cut down the trees, don’t kill the goats…” she scratched her head, thinking of another piece of advice, “Oh, and the dog’s name is Stewart.”

With that, the old woman sat down again and put her hand on the tiller. 

“Wait, you don’t have a key?” Pearl blurted. 

“There’s one in the house. If that goes missing there’s a spare under a rock near the front door.”

“Oh- alright.” She felt that she didn’t really have any more questions, and the woman seemed to want to leave in a hurry. 

Suddenly, and without much warning even to herself, she asked, “Why shouldn’t I kill the goats?”

The woman stopped really moving and cocked an eyebrow at her. “Just don’t. They don’t really belong to you, anyway.”

Pearl pulled her mouth up in an awkward smile and nodded. That was good enough for her. 

With a big grumble, the engine got louder and propelled the woman away from Pearl and the island. 

“Thank you for the ride!” Pearl hollered, and the woman waved over her shoulder without looking back. 

Pearl stood there looking after her until she couldn’t see her anymore, and then turned to go into the house. The dock, the shed and its tree, the set of boats, and the back wall of the house were enclosed in a fence to make a little yard that Pearl crossed to the back door. It was heavy, and it opened when she turned the knob. 

Dust rushed into her mouth when she stepped inside, making her cough and pull her shirt over her mouth. A fine layer of it had settled on every surface, and Pearl sighed against the inside of her shirt. So dirty. Still, that meant she got to clean, which was always nice. Pearl shut the door, put her bag down, and rolled up her sleeves. 

About two hours later, the kitchen was shiny, the living room looked lived-in but not abandoned, and the area around the front door was as clean as she could make it without trying to find places for all of the papers, odd shoes, and umbrellas. 

A few boxes sat in front of the hall that led to the other half of the house, in no need of dusting because they were Pearl’s. She hauled one off the top of the pile and rummaged in the one underneath it until she found her rifle. Pearl took it out of its case, checked for damage (found none), and then rested it against the wall next to the door. 

She unpacked for another hour before she realized she should probably eat something. There was food in the pantry and milk and eggs in the fridge; all of it seemed pretty edible to Pearl, so she threw something together, ate, did the dishes, and went back to unpacking. 

All of her stuff was at least out of boxes by sundown. Pearl went to put her sheets on the bed and was surprised to find a bedroom that would have looked occupied if not for all of the dust. She opened a dresser drawer experimentally and found folded clothes. A hum full of suspicion and curiosity found its way out of the back of her throat. The food was one thing, that had probably been left here the day before, but clothes? Pearl closed that drawer and began opening others. She found more clothes, balled pairs of socks, briefs, condoms, an empty M&M wrapper. 

Pearl decided immediately not to touch the condoms with her bare hands- for comfort’s sake- and not to sleep in the bed until she’d changed the sheets. She checked for bugs as she did so, but the mattress was clean. Well, it was now. Pearl looked at her sheets on her new (used) bed with her hands on her hips for a moment before wandering back to where she put the box that contained her clothes. She heaved it into the bedroom, found her pyjamas, a towel, and her toiletries. 

The bathroom across the hall was small, but it had a shower-slash-tub, so she was fine with the tight spaces. After sweeping everything off the counter and into a trash can, including bottles of hair product and a pack of cigarettes, Pearl put her own things on the counter before getting undressed and into the shower. The water got warmer than freezing cold,  _ Yess, _ and she spent some time under the hot water before washing her hair. 

After getting out and getting dressed, she turned off all of the lights in the house and brushed her teeth before going to bed. 

Pearl had a dream about holding a pistol and being hot enough to feel sweat dripping down the hair on her temples. It was vivid, and compared to the other dreams she’d had, pretty calm. 

She got up, got dressed, and continued to unpack and clean. By lunch the bedroom was clean, its previous occupant’s belongings in the boxes Pearl’s had come in. She decided to save some of the clothes in case she needed them; there were winter jackets and other things that might come in handy in a few seasons, so she stuffed most everything that wasn’t hers into the room across the hall to be organized later. 

Pearl was distracted then by barking, which must have been happening for a minute before she really paid any attention to it. Living in a big city had trained her not to pay barking much mind, but now that she was alone she would have to change that, especially since she was the one feeding this dog. Pearl opened the front door and yelled when a little baby goat careened past her legs and into the living room. 

“Hey! No! Wait!” 

Before she could grab it, the collie bounded in and barked at the goat until it went outside again. Pearl stood sort of numbly, looking at the mud on the floor, and then sighed as she went outside. She could do that after. 

Outside, there were five small goats and one big one, who was going a little grey. 

“Um,” Pearl stood and clapped her hands together like she was about to address a kindergarten class. “This way, everyone,” she waved her arms towards the barn and took a step in that direction before the collie, Stewart, rounded them up and herded them away. Pearl followed, smiling a little bit, as they all headed towards the barn. 

This reminded her of when she was a teenager. That was ages ago, but remembering the look on her mother's face when she said she wanted to stay with her aunt in the country for the summer had been worth all the mud and the poop on her boots a little later. 

The goats- well, the kids- played around on the thin layer of hay that littered the barn floor. The older one sat slowly and watched them tumble around. The barn had stables, maybe for other kinds of animals, but Pearl doubted that a horse or a cow would have enough space here. 

The island was small enough to shout and be heard across at the widest point, and longways it was a few minute’s walk from one end to the other. It was shaped sort of like a ship. Pearl lived near the imaginary Captain’s Quarters, and the pond sat over the deck near the bow, getting wider as it stretched to Port. The pond didn’t split the island completely, but it might have if not for a little stretch of land occupied by trees opposite the break Pearl had passed yesterday. It was just big enough for those and a small path to the tip of the bow, where another more circular pond sat like a coin just before the place a figurehead should be. 

Yes, too small for a horse. She liked the idea of taking care of one again, though. 

She scanned the walls of the barn and found some graffiti scratched in the back wall. It looked like a crude drawing of a goat with big horns. Underneath was scratched the words, 'RIP Phillip’. 

Pearl turned to look at the old goat over her shoulder and then back at the drawing. Maybe Phillip was the late father. She touched the scratches with her finger and left it alone after that. 

Pearl went to look for some alfalfa she could feed the goats with, but the building she thought was a shed before turned out to be a chicken coop. There were three hens lazing about on the floor, in a little gossip circle. Pearl checked for eggs in their nests, but came up empty. There was a basket for them sitting outside next to the ramp, though. Pearl wondered why there were only three when it looked like a dozen or more hens could nest in here, but was thankful for less of them to look after by herself. 

The blue building past the barn and closer to the pond turned out to be the place to look for food and supplies. There were a few bales of hay just inside the door, and chicken feed against another wall. Pearl noticed folded-up sails and masts piled haphazardly near the back past all of the garden tools, flashlights, a wheelbarrow, and other miscellaneous farm things. They looked big enough to go with the three boats Pearl was told to save for emergencies. She wondered if it was a good idea to go sailing by herself without a life jacket, but saw that there was one hanging on the wall a second after that thought crossed her mind. She decided to think about that later and went to feed the goats. 

The two black ones were the most excitable, and it was hard to get them to sit still long enough to eat. They kept running around and coming back to nibble from the wheelbarrow and running off again. The white one wasn’t far behind the other two, but the brown one and the brown and white one hung back and ate together. The old goat was brown and white too, but it didn’t look young enough to be their mother. Pearl wondered if they were orphans, considering Phillip's memorial. She thought again that that was fine, if a little sad. After tipping the wheelbarrow over so the goats could go back to the pile of hay if they wanted, she wheeled it back to the shed to get the chicken feed. 

Pearl dumped some of it into a metal bucket and carried it out, but stopped to look at the small red building next to the shed. She had seen it before, but now she was curious about what was inside. The little building and the shed faced away from the barn and towards both the ocean and the smaller side of the bigger pond. It looked like a closet standing alone with it's own roof. 

As she approached, a strange rattling sound accompanied the door moving on its own. Pearl stopped walking and stared at it, a feeling of unease settling in her chest. She put the bucket down and tried to peek inside through a crack in the door, but it was bigger than the frame. She couldn’t see inside, and the door was still rattling. 

Pearl tried to settle the squirrel running in circles inside her chest with a deep breath, but she was still kind of itching when she pulled at the door. 

It seemed to come un-stuck, and Pearl yelled in surprise when something smashed against the other side and shoved her to the ground. Pearl watched the world upside-down on her back as a brown and white goat ran to her right and away from the pond towards the barn. 

She sighed and grumbled as she stood. The little goat prison looked like it was converted from an outhouse on the inside; there was still a small protrusion in the wall for toilet paper, but the floor was flat wood. It was full of long garden tools. Pearl took note of a dirty shovel and a garden gnome before shutting the door. 

The goats seemed happy to be reunited. They followed their mother around to discarded roofs that made shade or shelter for whatever small animal that decided to hide underneath them. There was one across from the entrance to the barn (past the fire pit circled with benches) and a larger one farther away from the barn than the tiny shed Pearl had found a goat in. The latter one had a large tree growing behind it; it must have been cool underneath. 

Pearl wondered how the goat had gotten stuck in there in the first place as she tossed feed over the ground in front of the coop. 

“Come on! Food.” 

The hens wandered out and pecked at the ground while Pearl watched the dog and the goats run around. 

After a minute, Pearl hopped over the fence and whistled to the dog. The goats followed him, and they all went back towards the house with some of the kids trying to steal from her. One of them got a pen out of her jacket pocket, and by the time she got it back she only pocketed it so that she could throw it away in the house. 

“Okay, Stewart,” Pearl sighed, mourning a good pen, “Let’s have tea.”

She gave Stewart a dog biscuit while she had cookies and hot tea- after she cleaned the mud off of the floor. 

Pearl didn’t usually watch TV, but she was curious about whether or not this was a color TV, so she switched it on. It was, on some channels, but it mostly had old shows like I Love Lucy and The Twilight Zone. It was odd. She thought absently about not apparently having internal heating (there was a fireplace in the living room), and seeing an old radio on the counter next to the stove, before deciding to watch Star Trek. 

While days turned to weeks, she often felt like she was back in time here, like she lived on a little time capsule surrounded by water and sky. It was nice, but it became kind of suffocating sometimes. She found herself missing speaking aloud a lot more than she thought she would, and had taken to having conversations with the goats. 

The chickens always seemed to ignore her, so she wondered aloud with the goats about what her old neighbors might be doing now. The family above her who yelled sometimes had always kept her up at night, even long after she’d stopped hearing them. She was never comfortable there on those nights. It always took a long time to convince herself that she was safe and that she could go to sleep. 

The neighbor on her left she never saw, but she heard someone having sex through the wall a few times. It would always make her feel gross, and she would either go outside for a while or listen to music. 

Her right-hand neighbor was younger than her, and taller by an inch or two. She got the impression he was stuck-up, despite living where he did, so Pearl avoided him if she could. 

The neighbor across the hall had been so good-looking that Pearl had avoided her at first too; she had thick pink hair and was also taller than Pearl, though Pearl didn’t mind this as much with her. 

“She was too young for me, though. It would have been weird,” Pearl mumbled. 

One of the black goats, who she had decided was called Philip Jr. (mostly because he seemed to lead his black and white siblings around), simply looked at her and continued to chew. 

“Not weirder than talking to goats though, probably,” Pearl said. 

Stewart suddenly barked. It was a loud and more anxious one than she’d heard before, and he was barking at something, so she turned to look where he was. 

He was barking at the tree across from the barn that was equally as far from there as it was from the house. There was nothing there, and as far as Pearl knew, there were no squirrels or rabbits on this island. Must have been a bird. 

“Cut it out, Stewart,” Pearl shoved his head playfully, but he kept barking. 

“Hey!” she snapped her fingers,  _ “Hiljainen! Shush!” _

Stewart barked fitfully and made a noise that was neither a whine nor a growl. It just sounded like he was complaining. 

_ “Se on se, ei enää!”  _ Pearl snapped again, and he turned away from the tree. 

Later, after putting the goats in the barn for the night, Pearl went to check the tree. Stewart followed at her ankles. It was pretty normal-looking for a tree. 

“See? Nothing here but a tree.”

Stewart stopped panting, closed his mouth, and cocked his head to the side. Something about it looked patronizing, and Pearl snorted. 

“Don’t look at me like that.”

Stewart began panting again and wagged his tail. Pearl thought that was decidedly weird, but he was just a dog. Dogs could sense humans’ tone changes, it was just a coincidence. 

“Ugh, I’ve been alone for too long,” Pearl grumbled, and marched back to the house. 

Pearl thought she should call someone for the company, but remembered a moment after she had the idea that she didn’t really have any friends. 

She thought absently about what calling Bismuth would be like, but shook that off quickly. That would probably suck more than anything, considering the last time they talked they had fought. 

Maybe she should get a cat. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This part is a little rougher around the edges, and leans more toward one side of the two moods i wanted in this than the other. I think it's still alright though.

Since arriving on the island, Pearl’s nightmares had subsided to vivid dreams, altered memories from when she had been deployed. It was nice not waking up on her back, stiff as a board and slightly tangled in her bedsheets. 

Well, it had been. 

Pearl jerked as she woke up from a dream about being hit over the head with something. In her waking memory, she’d had a helmet on when that had happened, but in the nightmare she could hear parts of her head splatter and crunch with each blow. 

Pearl sat up in bed, breathing through her mouth, and ran to the bathroom. 

She gulped a mouthful of tea fifteen minutes later and winced because she hadn’t waited long enough for it to cool. Coughing, she noticed it was still dark out. 

Deciding she’d rather not go back to sleep, Pearl put some boots and a jacket on over her pyjamas and shuffled outside. The sun wasn’t nearly there yet, so it was very dark. Pearl fumbled around in her pockets for a keychain flashlight and found a bigger one. 

She clicked it on and waved it around, trying to establish reality and slow her heart rate down. 

The human figure standing beside the tree a ways away from the house did nothing to help her with this. 

Pearl gasped, sloshing tea onto her leg and whipping the flashlight up as she jumped. When she directed the light at the tree again, the figure was just going behind the trunk. Pearl spun on her heel and ran inside to grab her rifle. She all but threw her cup of tea onto the floor in her haste. 

Holding the flashlight under the forestock so that she could see where she was aiming, Pearl rushed to the tree. Her heart was hammering so hard she could hear it in her ears, but her hands weren’t shaking. She turned the safety off as she got nearer. 

Stewart barking at this tree a few days ago came back into her head for a brief moment before she rounded the trunk and saw noone. 

Momentarily confused, Pearl circled the tree again, until she tiredly realized she’d been inside the house long enough for whoever that had been to run away. She scanned the trees and bushes near the edge of the island, and then turned around to look in the direction of the fire pit, and then the chicken coop. 

Pearl didn’t see movement, and decided to check on the goats. That could have been a prankster out to mess up her barn, but an hour’s boat ride was a little far out of the way for a prank. Maybe this was more serious than that. 

Shoving that thought down, Pearl walked as quickly as she could with the rifle pointed in front of her towards the closed double doors of the barn. She supposed that was a good sign and opened them before slapping at the light switch. Light flooded the space, and the mother goat stuck her head up sleepily from the pile of fur and tiny horns she was a part of. 

“Sorry,” she murmured. 

Pearl went through all of the stables and even into the hay loft before deciding the trespasser hadn’t come in here to hide. She turned the light out and would have continued her search with the shed if she hadn’t heard someone snicker over her shoulder. 

Pearl went rigid, and spun around so fast that hay and dirt probably spun with her heel and the other ball of her foot. She had brought her rifle down and then up in a smooth motion and was now pointing it into the barn. The lights were off, but her flashlight probed the corners as she stood there in the doorway, frozen in concentration and fear. 

“Who’s there?” Pearl said tremulously.  _ Dammit. _

Pearl wanted to scare whoever this was, so using the native language without her voice shaking might help. 

_ “ _ _ Kuka siellä on? _ _ ” _ she barked. Better. 

_ “Tule ulos ja en ampuisi sinua!” _

Nothing moved but the goats, who were getting spooked by all of the shouting. Distantly she heard Stewart barking inside the house. 

_ “ _ _ Miksi en näe sinua ennen? _ _ ”  _ Pearl asked more quietly.  _ “Missä sinä piilotit?” _

She heard another very faint laugh. It made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. 

Stewart was still barking. 

Pearl felt ice grip the muscles in her shoulders and drip into her stomach. 

_ There’s someone in my house.  _

Pearl spun with the same movement as before and sprinted back to the house. She ran up the steps and rammed into the door with her shoulder only to get nearly knocked off of her feet by Stewart. He bounded outside and towards the barn. Pearl looked inside, to Stewart, inside, and back again before running after him. 

He slid right into the barn and ran to the corner, raising hell as the goats scattered. Pearl saw the end of this as a group of them pushed one of the doors open. Pearl rushed past them and pointed her flashlight at Stewart. He was barking at the back wall. 

Pearl searched with the light, but all she saw was the etching of Phillip. She didn’t hear laughter again. 

The next few days were filled with intrusive thoughts. She was very jumpy, and worried she might have hallucinated that whole thing. Pearl had to remind herself that Stewart had known someone was there too after every hour or so of thinking in circles. 

Where had they gone? Were they still here?

That second thought had Pearl carrying her rifle everywhere attached to a strap slung over her shoulder. She had yet to point it at anything, but she was tempted at night; her nightmares were getting worse. Worse than some of the most awful nights in her old apartment, even. She felt trapped. Like she was being hunted and couldn’t do anything about it. 

Finally, one night a few long days later, Pearl didn’t have a nightmare. 

She sank into a tired sleep and dreamt about tall, tall trees, dappled shadows, and the familiar silhouette of someone she followed but never caught up to. 

Pearl blinked awake, and for a second she was fine, but then she didn’t recognize the ceiling. She flailed in panic and rolled off of the couch. On her hands and knees, she realized her pyjamas were a little wet. 

Pearl sat on her butt on the floor and looked at her clothes. She was smeared with dirt in some places, and her feet had grass on them. Pearl got up and went to the bathroom to look at herself in the mirror. She had dirt on her cheek and her pyjamas told her she’d rolled in mud. 

_ I’ve never sleep-walked before,  _ Pearl thought worriedly.  _ Not ever.  _

Pearl watched herself chew her lip in the mirror for a moment before deciding to take a shower. 

The rest of that day seemed pretty normal. Stewart was happy, and the goats ate as much as they should. The chickens were the chickens. 

“I don’t get it, Phillip, I really don’t,” he mumbled. “Maybe I’m finally going crazy.”

Phillip blinked at her and hopped away to play with his brother. Pearl sighed.  

That night Pearl was a little afraid of going to sleep. She had been for years, but after a few days of insomnia years ago she sort of just decided she didn’t want to deal with that and made herself go to bed every night. Tonight though, she was afraid of something that might be real, a real threat, so she stayed up watching TV. The guy she paid to bring her supplies had brought her a pack of oreos because of a sale this week, so she sat down with those and finished half of them before dozing off in her chair. 

She was dreaming about stars when a soft murmur turned it into a dream about sunlight. The murmuring turned into running water, and then to birdsong. 

The packet of oreos falling onto the rug with a little snap woke her up. Pearl jerked up and rubbed her face. Her skin was warm from sunlight resting against her skin, and Pearl realized she must be late feeding the animals. She catapulted out of her chair and went to her bedroom to get dressed, passing a slumbering Stewart twice there and back. She nudged him with her boot, “Hey, up! Up!”

Stewart jerked awake and stood before shaking himself out. 

“Good boy. Work time.”

Over the next few days she eased herself back into a rhythm, and eventually one morning she left her gun in the alcove next to the door. 

Phillip’s horns were getting a little longer. She had finally figured out how to get him to talk back to her: she just kind of yelled wordlessly when he made his weird goat noise. 

“Do you want some more hay?”

“Aaaaaaaaaa!” Phillip said. 

“Aaaaa!” Pearl replied, holding a bundle of it out for him. 

Stewart barked. 

A roll of thunder chose that moment to sound off. Pearl squinted at the mass of clouds on the horizon; the wind was coming this way, and the waves had been high this morning. 

“Storm.”

It just began to rain when Pearl shut the barn doors tight with the goats inside. 

“Stewart, come.” 

They ran back to the house together, and as had become habit by now, Pearl bolted the door. She cooked dinner while Stewart followed her around and sat on his haunches until she gave him a little chunk of beef. 

“Okay now shoo, leave me be.”

Stewart turned around and galloped to the living room. After she ate her stew, Pearl found him sitting on the couch and staring in the direction of the TV. The window was behind that, so she assumed he was watching the clouds. The were roiling, indigo and black against a fiery sunset. After an hour of ignoring the TV to do a crossword puzzle, the sky was dark and foreboding, and rain was pelting hard against the roof. Pearl thought she might not sleep with all the noise, but she did, as well as any other night. 

She woke early from a nightmare about the feeling of a machine gun jerking in her arms as she shot at an unknown target. The soft rain against the roof above her bedroom was a huge juxtaposition, and a small surprise. 

Pearl got out of bed, got dressed, and had breakfast before going outside. She put her hood up and was about to lock the door behind her when the sight of one of the barn doors standing wide open gave her a cold shock. For a moment she didn’t know what to do, and in the next one she was going back inside to grab her rifle. 

She and Stewart ran to the barn, and when they arrived Stewart barked fitfully at his charges as Pearl pulled the door closed against the rain. She worried the trespasser had finally done something awful, but all of the goats looked fine, if a little cold. 

Pearl was almost calm when she realized Stewart was still upset about something. He was barking and chattering at her, and then at the goats. Pearl’s shoulders slowly slumped as she did a headcount. 

_ Where’s Phillip?  _

“Phillip?” Pearl called, looking through the stables and coming up empty. Stewart was still barking. He jumping at the door, waiting for Pearl to open it so he could zoom outside and find Phillip himself. 

Icy panic very suddenly seeped into her skin, but she felt slightly displaced from it, like it wasn’t entirely hers. She grappled for sense and found it. 

“No- Stewart stay. Sit!  _ Istua!  _ Stay!” She shouted this as she opened the barn door and Stewart barked from his seat on the ground. 

Pearl trudged outside, her rifle resting in her hands and pointed to the ground on her left. 

“Phillip?!” she hollered, looking around the back of the barn. 

The panic was still eating at her stomach, but she didn’t know why she was so scared. She was probably crazy and he had probably wandered off when he woke up. 

“Phillip! Food! Come here!”

He wasn’t behind the barn, so she jogged up towards the shed where she kept the hay. Maybe he’d gotten hungry and pushed the gigantic wooden door open all by his tiny self. 

Both ponds had flooded the night before, so Pearl had to slosh through mud that was mostly water to get to the shed’s door. Pearl poked her head in, but there was nothing obviously amiss in there. She should check the other, smaller shed next to this one. Maybe he’d gotten stuck in there like his mother had a while ago. 

But then Pearl saw a ragged little shape on the ground near the discarded roof and its tree. 

She gasped, momentarily frozen, and then tumbled forward, “Oh!”

Pearl stood above the body for a moment before kneeling and touching it. Phillip was cold. 

She sat down and pulled him gently into her lap. He looked waterlogged and tiny, but he could be sleeping if he wasn’t so cold and going slightly stiff. 

Pearl realized her face had warm water on it instead of the drizzle, and then sobbed. She pet his nose and his little legs with trembling fingers, crying quietly. Pearl half-muffled a sob against her sleeve as she wiped her nose. 

She suddenly heard a quiet gasp behind her. It was a soft and sad noise, and Pearl whipped around to see who had made it, but there was noone there. Just the garden gnome lying on its face in a puddle of muddy water. 

Pearl wrapped him in a blanket and put him on the carpet in the living room while she went to dig a hole. She came back half an hour later with a basket of yellow flowers that she’d decided to pick on her way back from the shed to see Stewart laying next to Phillip on the floor. He looked up at her with big soppy eyes and whined. 

Pearl swallowed a lump in her throat, “I’m going to bury him.” She paused. “Do you want to come?”

Stewart got up and sat next to Phillip instead of lying with his chin on his paws. Pearl took that as a, ‘Yes, but I’m still sad,’ and went to pick Phillip up. 

Stewart followed her to a small tree a little ways away from where she’d found Phillip. She set him down in the bottom of the little grave she’d dug and put the flowers on top of him in ones and twos. When she stood up with an empty basket, Stewart howled low and whined. 

Pearl wiped her face, “Uum,” she stood there and breathed like she was trying not to cry, but she was already doing that. “I’ll miss our talks,” she whispered. She held her breath, sighed, and knelt to grab the shovel. 

Pearl put a rock on top of the mound of earth when she was done. She shuffled away after looking at it for a minute or so and put the shovel back in the shed. The gnome was gone. That was odd, she hadn’t moved it from where it had been on the ground. She looked around for it, but it wasn’t there. 

Already more than a little paranoid, Pearl went to check on the rest of the goats. Pearl sighed momentarily at the giant hole under the door Stewart had dug in his haste to get out of the barn, wondering why she hadn’t thought twice about him being in the house before. She brushed that off and counted the goats, all were present and accounted for. She realized Phillip was the only one she’d given a name and worried for a moment that she’d jinxed him. 

_ I don’t need that in my head, too.  _ Pearl shook her head like she was dizzy and stepped up to the back wall. 

“Rest In Peace, Phillip,” she mumbled. After a moment, she dug around in her pocket for her knife and opened it. 

A few minutes of scratching later, a smaller drawing of a goat with tinier horns accompanied the drawing of his father, with the words “R.I.P. Phillip Jr.” scratched underneath him in Pearl’s unique font. Pearl sniffed and put the knife back into her pocket. 

She turned around, “Come on guys, time for food.”

After the remaining goats were fed (Phillip’s black brother kept wandering off, and Stewart had to corral him back), Pearl thought about how in the world he’d gotten out. She stood still for so long the brown goat started eating the cuff of her pants. 

“Hey!” Pearl pulled her leg away, stuck her pitchfork into the ground, and went to close the barn door. She shut it as securely as she had the night before and rounded the barn to open the door in the side. 

Pearl took a few deep breaths, jumped up and down to limber herself up, and then charged full steam at the inside of the front barn door. It clattered when she rammed her shoulder against it, but it didn’t open. That should have been enough to prove that it hadn’t been the wind to blow the doors open, but that had felt good. 

She charged again. 

**_BANG!-a CHUNK_ **

Her breathing was getting ragged. 

**_BANG!-cc-cungk_ **

She ran at the door with a yell this time. 

**_BANG!-dk-dk-dk-dk…_ **

Pearl fell over onto her back with the momentum of being pushed away and breathed hard at the ceiling. Stewart barked a few times, but was otherwise quiet. 

The only sound inside the barn was Pearl breathing, the rain making a quiet blanket of sound against the roof, and… someone other than Pearl crying. 

Pearl looked up from where she was laying, which meant she was looking at an upside-down back wall. The sound was muffled, but she could definitely hear someone crying. She rolled gently over onto her stomach and lifted herself silently to her feet. Approaching the back wall without making much noise was easy with so much hay, but she didn’t want to risk making noise, so getting to the wall took a minute filled with apparently disembodied sobbing and sniffling. It sounded like a woman, a young woman. 

When Pearl got close enough to the Phillips’ memorial to touch it, she spread her fingertips out and sort of lowered herself closer until her ear was pressed against her etching of Phillip. 

She felt like she was listening to something she shouldn’t be back in her old apartment, like there was a room beyond this wall occupied by a crying woman. 

Like before, Pearl felt warm tears on her face before she realized she was crying. She felt immeasurably sad suddenly. The feeling had snuck up on her, and all she wanted to do for one paralyzing moment was scream in agony. 

And then it passed. Pearl stepped away from the crying wall, wiped her cheeks, turned around, and walked out of the barn. 

She walked until she found her porch, sat down on the top step, and cried into her knees until her eyes hurt. Stewart wandered up a minute after she’d started and sat next to her until she yielded and hugged him. 

Later that night, Pearl sat on one of the benches around the fire pit, orange and yellow flames crackling quietly in front of her. 

“He was a good goat,” Pearl whispered, scratching Stewart behind the ears. He whined and rested his chin on Pearl’s leg. 

Pearl stared into the flames for another minute. 

“Stewart, I really think I’m officially… totally insane.”

Stewart heaved a sigh. 

“...At least I know it. I’d hate to be one of those oblivious ones. Healthy people aren’t supposed to hear crying through walls that don’t have anything but oceans on the other side.”

Stewart’s ears twitched under Pearl’s fingers. 

Pearl listened to the night move around her; waves crashing and leaves whispering to each other. Until leaves whispering turned into…  _ someone _ whispering. Inside the barn. 

Something like indignation made Pearl stand up, grabbing her rifle on the way to her feet. She all but jumped over the fire and marched towards the opening between the two doors. 

“WHO THE HELL IS IN HERE!?” she shouted. Everything, including the waves, seemed to get quieter. Anger crackled through the air like electricity. Pearl couldn’t tell if it was hers. 

“I  _ know _ there’s someone here!” 

No answer. 

“Did you kill my goat!?” she shouted. 

Hot, black rage hit her in the face and filled her up, and suddenly she wanted to kill something. 

“ANSWER ME!”

She fired the rifle into the ceiling and scattered a few birds outside. 

A high, tinny whistling sound filled her ears. She thought it might be from the gunfire at first, but realised a second later that it was getting louder. 

A disembodied, high-pitched scream was getting closer, and as Pearl looked around for the source of it, something…  _ grew _ out of the air in front of her and catapulted into her stomach. 

It was like she’d been hit by a cannonball. She flew backwards and off her feet, knocking the barn door open with her back before she and whatever had collided with her hit the ground hard. 

Pearl was no longer holding her gun, she’d dropped it, and a moment after she’d hit the ground and Stewart started barking she was punched hard in the nose. 

_ “¡Que te jodan por decir eso!”  _

Pearl registered that she was being straddled, punched, and screamed at by a person a second before she was punched again. 

She switched from surprised-and-defenseless to trained-to-kill and flipped the woman over with a grunt. Pearl realized a second after pinning her that she was touching bare skin and that this person was stark naked. She made a weird noise of embarrassed surprise and paid for her moment of hesitation with a punch to her mouth so hard it spun her around and dropped her onto her elbows and knees. 

Pearl spat blood and blinked the ringing in her ears away as her attacker yelled again. 

_ “¡No lo maté! ¡Nunca lo mataría! ¿Cómo te atreves a decirme eso? Bastardo!”  _

Pearl’s head was too jumbled to decipher the Spanish, but she recognized she was being insulted there at the end. 

She got up onto one knee and turned to look at this person full on. She was short, and naked, and still yelling. 

_ “¡Ni siquiera son tuyos! ¡Él era mío!”  _ she waved her fists emphatically as she yelled, her voice beginning to chip and crack under the weight of wanting to cry. 

Something the old woman who had given her a ride to this island had said flew back across her mind. 

_ They don’t really belong to you, anyway.  _

Pearl stared limply at her trespasser, who was apparently not one of those, and sat down on her butt in the dirt. 

_ “Lo siento,”  _ Pearl mumbled. 

The naked woman gasped like Pearl had slapped her, and then broke down into sobs so exuberant that she fell to the ground with them. She sobbed hard as Stewart padded up to her and whined until she hugged him. 

Pearl looked at them both for a moment, quite shocked. 

_ “Tú ... ¿ustedes dos se conocen?”  _ Pearl asked numbly. 

Bloodshot, dark brown eyes looked out at her from a tangle of long hair. Pearl wondered how a brown-skinned Spanish person had made it to Scandinavia with no clothes and eight goats, but she didn’t currently have the wherewithal to ask such a complicated question politely. 

The eyes looked away, and the woman nuzzled into Stewart’s fur. She sniffed and mumbled something. 

_ “¿Cómo?” _

She looked back up at Pearl.  _ “Él no me gustó antes,”  _ she mumbled,  _ “Sin embargo, ahora es amable conmigo. Le di un sueño.” _

Pearl was beginning to calm down, but everything was still very hard to hold. She put her head in her hands and groaned,  _ “No sé lo que eso significa.” _

_ “Eso está bien.” _

Pearl criss-crossed her legs and tried not to stare at the wrong places, but she felt like staring just because of the weird magic she had seen a few minutes ago. 

_ “¿Cómo hiciste eso? Lo que hiciste antes,”  _ Pearl mimed punching herself in the stomach. 

All she got was a strange stare. 

Pearl sighed quickly and came up with another question.  _ “Estabas llorando? Detrás de Phillip?” _

The woman nodded. 

Pearl chewed on her lip in thought. 

_ “¿Habla usted Inglés?”  _ she asked. 

“Yeah.”

Pearl’s heart leapt at more familiar ground. She got curious and asked,  _ “Puhutko suomea?” _

The woman winced and said,  _ “ _ _ Vähän.” _

Pearl laughed quietly in what was probably embarrassing excitement. She suddenly felt a little afraid to hear this person speak English. 

She asked anyway, “What happened to Phillip?”

The woman hid her face in Stewart’s neck fur and didn’t seem to want to answer. 

_ “Por favor. ¿Fue por mi culpa?”  _ Pearl pleaded. 

The woman looked at her again and shook her head. She looked scared. And sad. 

Pearl let the pause stretch wide before she spoke again. 

“Why was the door open?”

The woman tightened her hold on Stewart and hid her face again. Pearl thought this was her answer and didn’t speak again, but the woman looked up after a moment. 

“I wanted to see them. I was cold,” she was crying again. “I thought they would be cold. I thought I closed the door enough, but… Phillip led Phillip away, I think.”

Pearl leaned forward in surprised interest. “What?”

“I brought Phillip to see them. I think he wanted to take his baby back, but it wasn’t a good idea. Stupid Phillip.”

Pearl felt hollowed out after listening to that. Shellshocked. 

“He was a baby,” the woman murmured, and Stewart whined. 

Pearl breathed funnily before getting her words out, “Phillip… Senior? He’s alive? Where?”

“No!  _ Sot! _ I know you saw it!” the woman gestured frustratedly at the barn. More specifically, Pearl figured, she was gesturing at ‘R.I.P. Phillip’. 

Pearl just stared at her. 

“You brought a goat back from the dead and he led his son to his death.” she said matter-of-factly, as if she was trying to get everything right in her head. 

The woman made a face and waved her hand as if Pearl was stupid for not putting it together faster. It made her frown. 

“I don’t believe you.”

The woman made a ‘pfft’ sound with her lips and sank through the ground like she was made of vapor. 

Pearl gasped and lunged to look for her, but it was just grass and dirt. She looked at Stewart, but he didn’t seem surprised. 

“Wait!” Pearl stood up, stumbling from a headache from being punched in the face. “Don’t go! Please…” No answer. 

_ “Ne me laisse pas seul ici,”  _  she whispered. 

_ “Vous parlez français aussi?” _

Pearl yelled and jumped out of her skin, spinning around and almost falling over in her haste. 

The woman was back, holding the white goat in her arms. 

_ “Oui!”  _ Pearl panted in a tone that said, ‘Fine, jump out at me. I’ll be okay.’

_ “Seulement parce que tu m'as appelé un idiot,”  _ Pearl said,  _ “C'est presque ma limite, j'ai peur,” _

_ “Het is niet van mij,”  _  the woman smiled. 

“I don’t know that one,” Pearl shook her head, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth in spite of herself.

The woman adopted a strange look that floated between quaintly happy and immeasurably sad before putting the white goat down and disappearing in a wisp of smoke. 

Pearl gasped, realizing after a moment that everything seemed to get darker, like she’d just looked into the dark after staring at a campfire. She also felt a pulse of pain in her nose and mouth and made a short sound of surprise and discomfort. She’d felt worse pain, but it was sort of weird that she hadn’t noticed she was bleeding. 

For the next few days, Pearl didn’t know whether to stay on high alert or not. Would carrying a gun around at this point be rude to… whoever that had been? And who _ had _ that been?  _ What _ had she been?

These same thoughts occupied her and sent her in circles, much like before when she was thinking about her assumed trespasser. 

Her food guy came after nights of paranoid dreams. He noticed that she looked a little out of it, and asked who she’d gotten into a fight with. 

Pearl waved a hand, “Oh, you know, just the local wildlife.”

He laughed, assuming she meant she’d gotten head-butted by a goat, going by the story he told her about the same thing happening to him. Pearl nodded and smiled as politely as she could and waved him off when he had to go. He’s gotten her a clearance cake this time. 

She hoped he was just being nice and not entertaining ideas that Pearl would be uncomfortable with. Buying her discount sweets would be a weird way of flirting, though. She hadn’t done it in a long time, but she could probably do better than that. 

Pearl was putting her groceries away and trying to remember the last time she’d been on a date when Stewart made a worrisome noise. She looked around at him and saw that he was sitting on his haunches at the back door, watching something she couldn’t see. 

_ “Oletko kunnossa?”  _ Pearl asked, walking over. 

Stewart barked, and Pearl heard someone talking on the other side of the door. It flew into her ear like a gust of wind and made her stop, teetering on the edges of her feet. 

“This way!” the voice said. 

It was almost high-pitched, and much different from the woman’s feminine rumble. Pearl unstuck her feet from the floor and gently pushed the door open. 

She didn’t see anything besides the hens wandering around in the back yard, and heard nothing but the wind and the rustle of grass, leaves, and water. 

Pearl stood back inside, thinking, and numbly decided that she was crazy. It was the easiest thing to assume, and what else would it be? She hadn’t seen that woman since she’d gotten punched in the face. Maybe it  _ had _ been a goat to give her a split lip. 


End file.
